


In the Hall of the Demon King

by artificiallifecreator, njw, salazarastark (niewanyin), Silver_Snow_77, vellaphoria



Series: A Journey of Personal Discovery Through Social Isolation [15]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Creepy Ra's, Demons, Humor, M/M, Protective Bruce Wayne, Protective Damian Wayne, Ra's is an asshole, Rescue, Urban Fantasy, magical beings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 17:20:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29887920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artificiallifecreator/pseuds/artificiallifecreator, https://archiveofourown.org/users/njw/pseuds/njw, https://archiveofourown.org/users/niewanyin/pseuds/salazarastark, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silver_Snow_77/pseuds/Silver_Snow_77, https://archiveofourown.org/users/vellaphoria/pseuds/vellaphoria
Summary: Life is looking pretty darn good for Tim, right up until an actual freaking demon shows up to demand he return some artifact he’s never even heard of. Apparently, his parents stole it? From this guy’s grandpa, apparently, who sounds like a real character.He stares at the demon, who stares back at him, muscular arms folded across his really unfairly broad chest. The demon is handsome, with black hair and rich, olive-gold skin, and green eyes which flash beneath dark, sculpted brows. His magnificent horns twist and arch back from behind his temples. Tim kind of wants to touch one.He blinks. Yeah, this isn’t good.
Relationships: Tim Drake/Damian Wayne
Series: A Journey of Personal Discovery Through Social Isolation [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1406953
Comments: 16
Kudos: 168





	In the Hall of the Demon King

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SoleminiSanction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoleminiSanction/gifts).



> Happy extremely late (or slightly early) birthday, Sol! We hope you enjoy this story and that it’s worth the wait!

Tim Drake is a perfectly normal, ordinary human—except for the fact that he’s able to see the magical beings who walk among the mundane. It doesn’t matter how good someone’s camouflage is or how powerful the spells are which hide their nature. Tim sees right through it.

He has no idea why he has this power. Neither of his archaeologist parents seemed to share it. He knows because he conducted numerous tests with his friends’ help. Since neither Jack or Janet ever reacted to the sight of Kon in full djinn form floating through the living room while Cassie manifested her wings as Bart zipped around the room at inhuman speed, cackling with mirth, well—he’s pretty sure they didn’t share the Sight.

If nothing else, his mom would’ve been mad that Bart was running in a room that contained so many of the priceless artifacts the Drakes spent most of their lives acquiring. For all her seemingly perfect icy facade, she definitely would’ve given some sign if she were able to see what they were doing. No, Tim is pretty sure his talent is not hereditary.

Puzzling origins aside, it sure as heck comes in handy sometimes.

For example, back when he was a bored, lonely kid wandering the city at night, as one does, he managed to accidentally earn himself an apprenticeship with the most powerful mage in the city. He’d spent many nights haunting the streets, searching for the legendary Dark Knight and snapping photos whenever he had a chance, but that night was different.

He was just edging cautiously out of an alleyway, trying to get a view of the street without being seen. When he saw what was happening, it was all he could do to lift his camera and make himself start taking pictures. He was terrified but way too excited to run even as his heart pounded and every instinct screamed at him to get away.

The Dark Knight was there, battling the Joker. A fight between the mysterious hero of Gotham’s magical underworld and its greatest monster—rumored to be half-demon, half otherworldly beast—was way too cool to miss, even if his hands were shaking a bit at the sheer aura of power being drawn to the area.

Tim just hoped both combatants would show up in the photographs he was taking. Some of the criminals the Dark Knight fights are entirely invisible both to the human eye and to mundane tech. There’s nothing quite like the disappointment that comes when an amazing shot of, say, the Dark Knight fighting the Scarecrow turns out looking like a man in an admittedly cool-looking cape punching and kicking at the air. Yeah, apparently revenants don’t show up in photographs. It’s annoying.

That night, Tim snapped a few dozen photographs, thrilled beyond belief at the chance to see the Dark Knight in action as he took down the Joker with a few well-timed spells and his signature technomagic gadgets.

As he watched, though, he felt a creeping sense of unease. Didn’t the Dark Knight see the wraith creeping up behind him? Tim waited until the last moment, hoping his hero would react. As the wraith cackled and raised her glowing, enspelled mallet high over the Dark Knight’s head, Tim panicked and blurted out, “Knight, behind you! Harley Quinn’s about to swing her mallet at your head!”

The Dark Knight reacted instantaneously, casting an area freeze spell and then several reveal spells, each of greater power than the last. After the third spell, the Knight finally turned his head, orienting on the revealed wraith who hissed in fury as he met her the dark abyss of her eyes. “Quinn,” he growled, then sent his magic forth in a dark wave, binding both the wraith and her paramour with little ceremony.

Then he turned to Tim.

Tim probably would’ve peed his pants if he could. Then again, if he was capable of movement, he already would’ve been long gone. Instead, he couldn’t do anything but stand there in mounting terror and panic. He’d been caught in the Dark Knight’s area effect freeze spell along with the rest.

He stared, wide eyed, as the Dark Knight approached. Maybe it was a good thing he couldn’t move—the last way he wanted to introduce himself to his hero was incoherent whining and an inadvertent bladder release.

“You saw her. How?” the Dark Knight growled. He waved a hand, casting the truth spell Tim had seen him use before to interrogate those he had captured.

Tim gulped, throat suddenly unfrozen by some unseen flick of the Knight’s magic. There was a faint shimmer on the edge of his vision, and he wondered if maybe that was an extension of his ability to see through magical disguises. Part of his mind was already plotting experiments to test that theory even as the rest of him was panicking over the awful situation he’d gotten himself into.

He experienced a mounting sense of horror as his mouth opened without his consent and babbled, “Uh, I see through all magic, no matter how powerful? I can always tell when someone’s passing as mundane. It’s how I figured out your secret identity when I was six. I always see through your masks when you’re in too big of a hurry to actually change out of your costume before going to galas as Bruce Wayne.”

He swallowed again, suddenly way more sympathetic to all those criminals who monologued their entire evil plans the moment the Knight had them in his grasp. That truth spell packed one heck of a whammy.

The Dark Knight stared at him, frozen, probably completely stunned by his confession. Quite possibly furious. Whoops. Tim slowly closed his eyes. Oh, great, there went a whimper.

A big hand closed on his shoulder. Tim whimpered louder. He’d seen what those hands could do. He did not want to experience any of the punishing magic the Dark Knight used on the various criminals he fought. “What’s your name? You’re just a child—where are your parents?” The Dark Knight’s voice didn’t sound mad. He sounded almost concerned.

Tim cracked open an eye, unable to fight the compulsion to answer. “Timothy Jackson Drake, but I usually go by Tim,” he said, unable to be anything but completely truthful. “I’m twelve, and I’m pretty sure my parents are in India this month. Or maybe they’re back in England? It’s hard to keep track.” He squirmed, the back of his throat itching at the incomplete answer but unable to give anything more precise since he honestly didn’t know any more himself.

“...I see.” The Dark Knight stared at him a while longer before giving a decisive nod. “Tim, you’re coming with me. How would you like to be my apprentice?”

Well, obviously there was only one possible answer to that question.

So, for the past eight years Tim has been the apprentice of pretty much the most awesome and powerful mage of the era. It’s great. He gets to help solve cases that affect the magical community of Gotham, deep in the secret underworld hidden away from the rest of the mundane humans who populate the busy city. Being able to see through any magical disguise is very helpful during investigations, especially when magical shields are layered such that each reveal spell only peels off one layer, like what happened with Harley Quinn.

That’s not all his special talent is good for, though. It also helped him meet his best friends. He remembers the time he managed to free Kon, a powerful djinn, from the cruel businessman who kept him trapped in a clear glass jar on a shelf in his office. He was horrified to see the other boy in there, chains on his wrists and a stormy look on his face. As soon as Tim told Bruce about it, the man immediately moved against his smarmy would-be business partner, Lex Luthor, to help rescue the trapped djinn.

“Hey,” Tim said awkwardly, fidgeting and trying not to look at the very large, very muscular, very _naked_ boy standing in front of him after he finally managed to break the jar and yell the incantation Bruce taught him.

“Hey dude,” the boy said with a huge grin. “Wanna make a wish?” He waggled his eyebrows and put his hands on his hips. Only the fact that said hips dissolved into smoke just below the waist kept Tim’s face from combusting through sheer embarrassment. All that naked chest, seemingly made of bulgy muscle piled upon bulgy muscle, was bad enough without having to worry about keeping his gaze off, uh, other things.

“I wish you’d put on some clothes!” he burst out, flustered, then blinked in surprise as jeans and a black t-shirt appeared on the boy, who now had legs. Well, that was convenient. “I’m Tim,” he offered after a shocked moment. “Welcome to being free, I guess?”

“I’m Kon,” the other boy said with a friendly smile. “Glad to meet you.”

Cassie was a different story. He spotted her magical nature immediately—even when they were hidden, her wings cast a shadow. He introduced himself and Kon, who immediately floated into the air in excitement at meeting another magical being. Cassie didn’t react so well to that, screaming in shock and throwing her ipod at him before backing away, eyeing them both with suspicion.

It took a while for them to believe her when she claimed she had no idea what magic was. It took even longer for them to convince her they weren’t crazy.

“So…” She stared at Tim after they’d all finally calmed down, arched brows lowered in concentration. “You see magic. And I—have wings.” Her brows lowered more and she narrowed her eyes, clearly still highly skeptical of his claims.

Well, Tim knew what to do about that. “Hold on—I’ll be right back.” He returned a few minutes later carrying one of the Dark Knight’s personal scrying glasses. Sometimes it paid to be a wealthy mage’s apprentice. “See?” he said smugly, pivoting the glass so the winged girl could see herself as she truly was.

“Whoa,” she said, staring, a look of wonder crossing her face. “Wait, so what am I again?”

By the time they solved the mystery of Cassie’s changeling heritage together, all three of them were fast friends.

As for Bart, well… When Tim first spotted the little clurichaun darting around the city, setting up minor pranks and then snickering when hapless mundanes walked right into them, he just sighed and texted the group chat.

_Guys, I think I found another magic kid. Wanna help out?_

Cassie and Kon met him at a nearby park within ten minutes. They made a game plan, stalked the clurichaun, and then confronted him together. Another five minutes later, and all four of them were in the park fountain covered in silly string with no real explanation for what the heck just happened.

“Oh my gosh that was _amazing!_ Can you guys really see me right now? I’m using my glamor—no one should be able to see through that. You guys are so cool! Are you friends? Can _we_ be friends? Hold on, I’m going to get us some pizza. Here, have some pizza! Oops—do you guys mind wet pizza?”

Tim blinked at the animated clurichaun. “Uh, wet pizza’s—” He paused, eyeing the soggy pizza. It looked really unappetizing, but the new boy was looking at him with such a hopeful expression, his golden eyes wide and innocent. “Fine,” Tim sighed, dutifully accepting a dripping slice and biting into it dubiously.

The clurichaun grinned up at him and held out a hand. “Hi, I’m Bart.”

The rest is history. All four of them have been best friends ever since, solving magical cases and curiosities on the side. Bruce approves, mostly because they usually manage to get themselves out of trouble about as often as they get themselves into it.

All of them were there for Tim after his parents’ deaths.

In a world of magic and intrigue, losing Jack and Janet Drake to something as mundane as a plane crash was not something Tim ever expected. He’s not sure what he would have done if Bruce hadn’t taken him in officially then, sheltering him until he turned eighteen two years ago and moved into an apartment with his best friends.

Tim is nearly through his apprenticeship now, almost ready to graduate and become a mage in his own right. He and the others have been talking about starting up their own magical investigation and response team in the next couple of years, once all of them finish their various schooling and apprenticeships.

Life is looking pretty darn good for him, right up until an actual freaking _demon_ shows up to demand he return some artifact he’s never even heard of. Apparently, his parents stole it? From this guy’s grandpa, apparently, who sounds like a real character.

Tim stares at the demon, who stares back at him, muscular arms folded across his really unfairly broad chest. The demon is handsome, with black hair and rich, olive-gold skin, and green eyes which flash beneath dark, sculpted brows. His magnificent horns twist and arch back from behind his temples. Tim kind of wants to touch one.

He blinks. Yeah, this isn’t good. He may be able to see through magical disguises, but that doesn’t give him any defense against active spells. He can be affected by common spells like the freeze and truth spells Bruce hit him with the night they first met. A love or lust spell would be an easy way for a demon to get what they wanted out of him. He narrows his eyes. He doesn’t _see_ anything to indicate an active spell—no faint shimmer in the air or sparkle in the edge of his vision to indicate magic, but there might be something he’s missing. Best to be on his guard. 

The demon stares at him, brows lowering. “You will return the artifact your parents stole from my grandfather. You have no right to retain the property of an al Ghul!”

Tim shakes his head slowly. “Look, like I told you before—” He winces, remembering the way he just threw the door open at the sound of banging, assuming it was Kon having forgotten his keys again. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. My parents traveled a lot and gathered many artifacts, most of which I know literally nothing about because we barely ever saw each other or spoke about anything beyond platitudes when we did.” He bites his lip, wondering briefly if he’s actually under a truth spell as well as a lust spell. There’s no other reason for him to give so much away to someone he just met.

The demon glares at him, then bares his teeth in a silent snarl, revealing delicately pointed canines. Sharp teeth should not look so appealing. “You _will_ return the artifact, or I will—” He reaches forward, obviously intending to grab his arm.

Tim braces himself, planning out his next ten moves. He’s pretty sure he can hold his own in a fight with a demon—probably. His training with Bruce has given him a few tricks a normal mundane wouldn’t be able to pull off, not to mention the emergency spells he has stashed around the room. All he has to do is somehow stall long enough to reach one, activate it without the demon tearing his arm off, and pray that this is a lesser demon he can hope to defeat on his own. Okay, so maybe he’s screwed.

In the end, he doesn’t find out because one moment, he’s in the apartment doorway facing a scowling demon. The next, he’s two blocks away in front of a coffee shop, Bart gripping his hand apparently having grabbed him and sped him out of there.

“Thanks for the save,” Tim breathes, allowing himself to sag against his friend. His heart is pounding because his body still hasn’t gotten the message he’s no longer standing in front of an angry apex predator.

“Who _was_ that guy? He seemed like a real jerk.”

“I… don’t know.” Apparently, his parents left him more than a minor fortune and a houseful of possibly-cursed artifacts. He takes a deep breath. “I think we need to go to Drake Manor. It sounds like there might be something there that could be dangerous.”

If there’s something in that house demons are after, then he’s got to figure out what it is and find it before they do.

Bart nods, expression serious for once. “We’re on it, Tim.” He holds up his phone and grins. “I already texted Kon and Cassie. Sleepover at your parents’ scary, haunted mansion!” He bounces around, cheering.

Tim rolls his eyes, but he feels marginally better. It’s impossible to feel completely bad when Bart’s around.

“You there! Halt, brigand, and hand over the artifact!” A very unwelcome voice sends his poor heart racing again.

“Holy crap!” Tim yelps, pivoting and staring in horror as the demon stalks down the street toward them, looking even more furious.

“Whoops,” Bart mutters, reaching over to grab Tim’s arm again. He pulls, and the scenery blurs until they slow and come to a halt in a nearby park.

Tim glances around before relaxing marginally when he doesn’t see a furious demon approaching. He sighs, blowing strands of hair out of his eyes. “Wow, this sucks. Okay, I think we might want to take the scenic route so he doesn’t— _seriously?”_ He plants his hands on his hips and glares at the demon, who just came into sight sprinting across the greenery toward them. “Would you quit following me?”

“Certainly,” the demon says, panting, his dark eyes flashing. “Simply return what you have stolen!” He presses a hand into his side and winces, clearly winded. When he catches Tim looking, he straightens with a tired glare.

“Geez, this guy’s persistent,” Bart mutters, reaching for Tim again. Tim nods, eyeing the demon with trepidation and a small but growing amount of respect. There are not many beings out there that can keep up with Bart once he gets going. This demon is clearly going to be trouble.

As the scenery starts to blur, Tim turns back and yells, “For the last time, I have no idea what you’re talking about!” He’s not very hopeful that it will help anything, but he has to at least try. The demon’s reply is lost to the wind.

Well, hopefully they can figure this thing out without involving Bruce. If they prove they can handle minor magical problems on their own, that’s the first step to demonstrating they can work as an independent team someday.

Also, Tim’s starting to get really curious about this supposed magical artifact. Just what did his parents get themselves involved in? 

* * *

“Is this a dried-up head?” Kon picks something up off a shelf and eyes it closely.

Tim glances over and then rolls his eyes. “That’s a dead mouse. This place has been closed for a while.”

“Ugh,” Kon says, tossing the mouse into the air. Right toward Tim. Asshole.

Tim bats it out of the air. “That’s disgusting, Kon.”

“Hey guys I brought the pizza— _aaaaah!_ Why is there a dead mouse flying through your house, Tim?!” Bart squeaks as he blurs for a moment, successfully dodging the gruesome projectile.

Cassie catches the dead mouse out of the air and raises a judgemental eyebrow at them. “Really?” She flicks it disdainfully into a nearby trash can. “Okay, so what do we know about the artifact?”

Tim thinks back to what the demon said when he first opened the door to him. “The demon told me his name is Damian al Ghul and that Mom and Dad took an artifact from one of his grandfather’s homes.” He considers that, frowning. “That seems really out of character for them. All of their digs were at ruins which had been abandoned for centuries—definitely nowhere that might be considered the home of anyone living.” A shiver passes through him at the potential implications.

Kon raises an eyebrow. “Okay, that’s creepy. So did he say anything about the actual dealybob?”

“Dealybob?” That doesn’t sound like a real word.

“You know, the thing they took.”

Tim shrugs. “He just said it was an object of great power and didn’t belong in the hands of filthy peasants.”

“Nice guy,” Cassie says, looking disturbed.

“Yup.” Tim’s just glad the demon doesn’t seem to have followed them here. Yet.

Kon frowns, looking around at the wall to wall shelves filled with curios and artifacts. “Well, that’s not very helpful in figuring out what the guy’s actually looking for.”

“Nope.” Tim sighs as he reaches for one of the pizza boxes Bart’s still holding. “This is going to be a long night.

A few hours later, he revises that estimate upwards by a few days. It’s going to take them a lot longer than one night to thoroughly search the seemingly endless shelves and boxes filled with possible enchanted items. His parents were _pack rats,_ and the inventory list is by acquisition per trip instead of by era or alphabetical by region. It sends a twinge through his chest to match each item to yet another day they stayed away.

The four of them found three large boxes and have been sorting the items into them; non magical items in the largest box, magical but not dangerous items in the second, and a few cursed, dark, or ambiguous items in the last. The first box is nearly full already with everything from funerary urns to statuettes to a jeweled headdress that should really be in a museum. The second has less items, most of which are functionally useless after so long gathering dust, but there are a few amulets and potion bottles that could probably prove useful.

The last one so far contains a dozen odd items. Most notable are a cracked clay plate with the face of some sort of storm spirit painted on it that made Cassie hiss on contact from the lightning shock, an ancient rusted iron sword with glowing runes and dried blood on it that doesn’t look like human blood, a golden circlet embedded with black diamonds and rubies that shine from within with dark magic in Tim’s sight, and a tarnished silver dagger with an emerald the size of a human eyeball in the hilt and a very old flesh-rotting curse contained within it. That last one was very gingerly wrapped in cloth and sealed to avoid any of them losing a finger or three from touching it.

“What about this?” Kon says, holding up a little trinket pinched between his thumb and forefinger. It looks like a faceted gemstone, most likely an emerald judging by the rich color, and reflects the light with a gemstone’s brilliance. Pretty as it is, nothing about it stands out from the dozens of other carved and faceted gemstones scattered across the shelf Kon’s pawing through until he smirks and flips it open, revealing a delicate golden hinge and complicated inner workings. “It looks like a pocket watch.”

Cassie frowns at it, her eyes going unfocused as she searches for any trace of demonic influence. She’s the most sensitive of them to dark magic, which makes her the best at ferreting out items with potential. “Maybe?” she says after a minute with a shrug, sounding frustrated. “Toss it over here and let me get a better look before we throw it in the box.”

Tim snorts from where he’s sitting on the floor with his lap covered in old journals, sorting through his parents’ records. If there’s any mention of them having raided a demon’s lair or encountering a demon on any of their digs, he’ll find it in here. Hopefully. “Hold on, I think I saw something in here about an emerald pocket watch,” he says, digging through the piles of journals around him and then flipping pages until he finds the right one.

“Anything interesting?” Cassie says, blowing her short blonde hair out of her eyes. “Because I’m not getting anything demonic off of it, but it’s most definitely bespelled.” She tosses the little pocket watch in his direction.

Catching the emerald pocket watch out of the air, Tim scans it quickly, noting the hexagonal shape and fine workmanship. It’s a perfect match. He holds it next to the detailed sketch on the page and looks at the label written in his mother’s neat, cramped handwriting. “Huh,” he says after a moment, a pucker forming between his eyebrows. “I almost hope this isn’t the one.”

“Oh yeah? How come, is it cursed?” Bart says, popping into the room with his arms full of odds and ends he’s gathered from the rest of the house. The distinct tinkling sound of broken glass draws all of their judgemental stares, and he winces. “Hey, it was like this when I found it!” He jiggles his arms, shifting to break one free, and reaches into the mass he’s holding balanced on his other arm to produce a little brown box. Shaking it, he reproduces the tinkling sound. “I think there’s something broken in this one, but I brought it anyway just in case.”

He blurs for a moment, and each of the little heaps laying around for them to sort through grows by a few items as he deposits his load. In the next breath, he’s reading over Tim’s shoulder. “Oh! That’s cool. But why would anyone bother to make an item bespelled as a chronometer for life cycles?”

The fine hairs on the back of Tim’s neck lift as he considers why, exactly, someone would want something like that. The knowledge of exactly where a person is in their life cycle definitely sounds like it could have some ominous uses. He blinks, then sets it gently in the box of items with real potential for being what the demon is after. “Yeah, okay. I think that one’s a possibility.” He shudders. Meeting his eyes, Cassie does the same.

If nothing else, the fact that he’s finally being forced to go through his parents’ musty old estate is probably a good thing. There are items of power here which should definitely be secured by more than the defenses he has in place. His wards are strong, but everything here should be catalogued properly and either put to use, sealed away, or destroyed as appropriate.

He sighs, looking down at the journals sprawled over his lap and trying not to allow himself to think about how any one of them was probably more important to his parents than him. Avoiding memories of his lonely childhood might have been a good reason to stay away from the house while he was younger, but he’s an adult now. It’s past time to face his ghosts and put them to rest.

The silence is what clues him in that something’s wrong. His best friends are many things, but quiet is not one of them. Raising his head, he looks around the room and tenses at what he sees, heart slamming in horror.

All of his friends are down. Kon is slumped across a curio table, covered in trinkets and dust from where he apparently collapsed into the shelf he was sorting through. Bart’s lying on his side halfway between Tim and Kon, arms and legs posed like he was in the act of running to help Kon when he fell. Cassie’s just curled on her side where she was sitting, looking for all the world like she’s asleep.

“Oh god, I hope they’re just asleep,” Tim whispers, or tries to. No sound emerges when he moves his mouth. Eyes widening, he picks up one of the journals and slams it down, an action which should result in a smacking sound. There’s nothing.

A spell of silence then, and… Sleep? Please let it be sleep, and not death. He lurches across the floor to check the others. The relief he feels when his fingers find the soft thrum of Cassie’s pulse at her throat is like nothing he’s ever felt before. He checks Bart and Kon, too, then carefully adjusts each of them to a comfortable position next to Cassie so they won’t wake up with sore necks or backs. Fingers shaking, he pulls out his emergency amulets and casts barrier after shield after protective barrier over all of them, ending by setting off his emergency beacon and pressing it into Cassie’s curled fingers.

That done, he rises to his feet, frantic plans spinning through his mind. He needs to get to his old room—that’s the only place in this house where he has a backup stash of spells and potions. It wasn’t long after he apprenticed to Bruce that the Drakes passed away, and once they were gone he didn’t come back here. Cursing his own lack of preparation, he activates the invisibility seals in his shoes and waits for the effect to crawl through his entire body before taking a step out of the room.

Whatever’s attacking them—almost certainly Damian, but he’s not discounting the possibility of other demons being involved at this point—is only after him, as evident by the fact that the others have been taken out of play but not killed. They’ll be safe within his barriers, and Bruce will be here soon to answer the beacon.

He’ll be furious that Tim used all his protections on his friends instead of himself, of course, but that can’t be helped. And if he can just make it to his old room, he’ll have some ammunition to put up a fight. The anti-demon barrier he set up around the house when he and Bart got here earlier should help slow down any entry attempts, at least—

His train of thought derails as a hazy form begins to materialize right in front of him. As Tim stares, wide eyed, the being’s features solidify enough for him to recognize Damian’s wicked smirk.

Tim throws the first object his hand settles on right at the demon’s half-materialized face, then blinks as what turns out to be a carved ivory pendant causes Damian’s skin to start blotching blue on contact. It startles the demon enough for Tim to duck a grab for his arm, but ultimately the bespelled pendant just turns his nose and cheek cobalt blue and annoys him. The thing is flung aside, and Tim can hear it embed itself in the wall with a solid _thunk_.

“Shit,” he breathes, then _runs._

There’s no way he’ll make it to his room before the demon finishes materializing—and how the heck did he manage to teleport himself beyond an anti-demon barrier, anyway? Unless he’s only part demon. Human or other ancestry might dilute his demonic heritage enough to get around it. Damn it.

Reaching blindly out as he runs past one of the ubiquitous shelves which line the walls in this benighted old house, he grasps something that feels smooth and round—a green glass ball full of something cloudy—and flings it without looking in the direction of the pursuing footsteps.

As it turns out, the ball had a wind spirit trapped inside. It explodes out of its prison with an unearthly wail, blowing Damian and Tim several feet apart with the force of it, then flies out the newly broken window with a screech. Tim rolls to his feet and keeps running, not daring to look behind him at the increasingly enraged demon pursuing him.

Tim ducks around a doorway and books it for the back staircase, momentarily throwing off the demon as Damian runs past the door and is forced to double back to follow after him. Tim throws a potion bottle behind him and slams the door as it breaks, not wanting to inhale the fumes. Not that the door holds against the demon, who wrenches it off the hinges moments later with a loud crack.

“Pah! You foul—why do you even _store_ an ancient lung-pox potion in your home, you utter _fool_ , you might have set this off at any time—!” Damian’s choking coughs follow him. Unfortunately, he’ll probably be able to throw that off pretty quickly, considering his powers. Oh well.

Tim speeds up, snagging a few more likely-looking bottles as ammunition. He’s all the way to the staircase before Damian catches up, this time not bothering to run. He’s still wheezing slightly when he materializes directly in front of Tim, blocking the stairs, but his glare is as strong as ever. “Just give me the item, you ridiculous creature!” He waves a hand toward the overburdened shelves and tables. “You have more than enough items of power—simply return this single, ill-gotten piece, and I shall leave you be!”

For a moment, he really wishes it were so simple. It isn’t, though, so he throws another mystery potion in the demon’s face. And watches, incredulous, as a lovely crown of pink and white flowers forms on Damian’s hair. “Huh,” he says, frowning. “I wonder what that one was actually for.” Neither of his parents cared much for flowers. Maybe it was an unwanted novelty gift from a coworker, set down and forgotten years ago.

Damian shakes his head, then blinks as the flower crown tilts and slips down his forehead. His dark eyes—green, Tim realizes suddenly, seeing them up close for the first time—cross as he stares at the flowers. “What,” he says stiffly, “the fuck?” He shakes his head again, only succeeding in loosening the flower crown so it dangles from his left horn, and bats at it irritably.

Tim takes that as his chance and bolts past him, taking the stairs three at a time and wishing like hell he’d spent enough time here over the past few years to at least trap the place. Slippery stairs, ice spells, golems animated by magic—there are so many useful things he could’ve done.

Instead, all he has are a couple of mystery bottles, each just as likely to hinder him as help. Eh, screw it. Hearing Damian’s sputtered curses below, he tosses another bottle at him. The wet slapping sound he hears is enough to make him turn around, even though he really should be focusing on getting to his room.

There’s a huge fish wrapped around Damian’s face, slapping him repeatedly as it flops back and forth and struggles to free itself from where his hands are grasping at it. That’s… “Huh,” he mutters, skidding to a halt in front of his childhood bedroom and reaching for the doorknob. “Maybe that one was from Dad’s fishing trips.” Jack Drake enjoyed fishing, but he probably had no idea what to do when he actually caught one. Sealing it in a potion bottle and then forgetting about it for years sounds about right for him.

Twisting the knob, his mind races ahead as he mentally maps the position of each amulet, talisman, and potion stashed in his old bedroom. There aren’t many, but it just might be enough. If he’s fast, he might even be able to get his hands on the three charged power crystals he has sealed into the bedframe. The power in each one would be enough to get off a major spell—a binding for Damian, a summoning for Bruce, and maybe a stronger protection spell for the house.

Just as he’s stepping into the room and hoping that maybe he actually has a chance in hell of pulling this off, he sees the familiar hazy form materializing right in front of him. Oh, no.

“Drake,” Damian says with a grimace, peeling the still-twitching fish off his face and dropping it on the floor with a disdainful flick of his long, elegant fingers. “Your hospitality leaves much to be desired.”

Tim gapes at him and hisses, “Maybe that’s because I’m not trying to make you feel welcome, since you broke into my house?” Spotting a protection talisman on the desk to his right, he darts out a hand. Maybe if he’s fast enough…

Damian’s hand closes around his and squeezes, his grip powerful but not crushing. “It matters not.” He eyes Tim, a frown gathering on his handsome face. “This is your final chance—simply hand me the item your parents stole from Grandfather, and I shall end this.”

Tim shivers, not liking the look in his eyes. “No.” Even if he knew what it was, he wouldn’t hand an item of power over to a demon for who knows what purpose.

“Very well then,” Damian says, eyes alight with mockery and a smirk on his full lips. “Since you refuse to return our property, then I suppose I shall simply bring _you_ back to Grandfather. Do not worry—he will be in a good mood once you confess the item’s location. He’ll likely release you unharmed. Well, without significant harm.” His green eyes flare with an inner light and the world warps and darkens around them.

Shit.

He has to close his eyes against the whipping wind and swirling darkness. Gravity, sound, and sensation disappear for what feels like a minor eternity, only returning gradually. When he finally comes back to full awareness, it takes him a moment to realize he’s pressed against something warm, practically wrapped in it actually. It feels really good.

After a while, sound returns and he becomes aware of a voice whispering in his ear.

“Curse it, why must humans be so impossibly delicate? Foolish. I should have remembered how little tolerance mundanes have for transport and made allowances. If I’ve broken him…” The muttering continues. It’s Damian’s voice, and presumably Damian’s big, warm hands gently rubbing up and down his back.

Tim is sitting on Damian’s lap. “What the heck?” he says, trying to spring to his feet and only succeeding in sagging listlessly to one side.

Damian frowns at him and adjusts him so he’s tucked carefully against his broad chest again. “Stop squirming,” he orders, a light blush high on his sculpted cheekbones. “I have already overexposed you to my dark magic with that thoughtless portal and dare not use it to warm you, so I must do so by physical means.” He resumes carefully rubbing warmth back into Tim’s upper arms and back.

“Uh,” Tim says after a suitable pause during which he tries and fails to take in the bizarre reality of being practically cradled in the arms of the demon who just kidnapped him. He’d been expecting something more along the lines of immediate torture—thumbscrews, screaming, the rack, probably some hellfire. Definitely not lapsitting and what really amounts to a prolonged hug. He blinks and looks around, deciding not to think about how damn good those thighs feel under him or how cute that blush was. “Where are we, anyway?”

The sky is dark, and not in a way that feels natural for the surface lands. There’s no light at all—no moon or stars, not even a faint illumination to indicate clouds obscuring the celestial bodies. The only reason he can see Damian is the fact that the demon apparently glows in the dark, a faint golden glow just illuminating his features. It isn’t bright enough to extend to their surroundings, unfortunately, or Tim would be more than happy to use his involuntary companion as a walking flashlight to figure out where they are. Either they’re underground, or… 

Damian takes a deep breath and sighs, the action making his chest rise and fall under Tim. “I took you halfway to Grandfather’s kingdom in the Dark Lands before I sensed your life force ebbing and brought us back out. Had I attempted to take you all the way, you most certainly would have died.”

Holy shit. Tim’s scalp prickles, an electric buzz sending his heart jittering as goosebumps rise on his skin. He’s in the Dark Lands, the inverse reflection of the world he knows that exists simultaneously in the same space on the other side. Bruce has only taken him to the Dark Lands once, to show him Gotham’s dark reflection, and it wasn’t pretty.

From what Damian said, not only are they in the Dark Lands, they’re some unknown distance away from Gotham. Tim has no idea where they are, no plan for escape, and no way to get home if he does manage to break free.

Awesome.

“Guess that would suck for you, huh? You’d never be able to get your artifact back,” Tim says, halfway wondering if that would have been better for everyone. As it is, his friends are unconscious and maybe hurt, Bruce is probably going out of his mind after following Tim’s emergency beacon and finding his friends instead, and Tim is still facing eventual torture and probable hellfire in a world far removed from his own. 

“That would be most unfortunate,” Damian says, frowning, “but I would not…” He shakes his head, his fingers running more slowly over Tim’s back as he appears lost in thought. “I did not intend to harm you,” he finally says, his embrace tightening marginally. He scowls. “If you had merely cooperated, none of this would have happened!”

Well, soft moment over apparently. “Didn’t intend to harm me?” Tim scoffs. “What do you think is going to happen when you carry me back to your grandfather, friendly banter and tea?” The mention of tea sends a deep stab of longing through him for Alfred’s friendly wrinkled smiles and seemingly endless supply of hot tea.

Damian just shakes his head. His troubled expression resolves into a determined look. “Silence. You must conserve your strength.” He tucks his arms under Tim’s thighs and shoulders, rises to his feet, and begins to walk. “We should reach the borders of Grandfather’s kingdom tomorrow morning. Once we have made it that far, it will be a simple matter for me to summon us directly to his presence.”

“Great,” Tim mutters, hiding his face in Damian’s unfairly broad chest. This sucks.

He expects a long, uncomfortable walk, and that’s exactly what he gets. Somehow, he manages to fall asleep anyway despite his resolve to stay awake and alert. He blames sleep deprivation and the lulling motion of being carried.

When Damian finally slows and then stops, Tim lifts his head and blinks up at him, briefly confused before he remembers everything that happened. He clears his throat. “Is this the part where you drag me through another of those gods-be-damned portals?”

Damian’s just staring at him. Tim narrows his eyes. “What? Do I have something on my face?” Ugh, he probably has creases from pressing his face against the demon’s clothing in his sleep. Great. Now he’ll lack dignity as he goes to his torture and or death.

“Fluffy,” Damian says after a moment, then promptly blushes again. He clears his throat and looks away. “Your hair, it’s ridiculous,” he says with a sniff.

Tim makes a face and reaches up to feel his hair, which—yep, it’s definitely very tousled from his impromptu nap. “If you wanted me to look good, you shouldn’t have chased me through my house and _kidnapped me,”_ he says, glaring.

“I did not say it looks bad.” Damian’s jaw tightens as though to hold back any more accidental compliments. “And no, to answer your original question. It is better not to be without shelter during certain hours in these lands. We need to make camp.”

Ah. Tim considers, then nods. If the actual demon is saying it isn’t safe for them to be out right now, then like hell is he about to argue with him. Sighted or not, he’s just a squishy human. “Great,” he says. “Got somewhere in mind?” All he sees around them is inky blackness. No, wait… There’s a faint ambient light, a sickly greenish glow outlining what looks like tumbled rocks and rough terrain. It’s like the land itself is glowing, which is both creepy and kind of useful, considering the absolute lack of light otherwise.

“Have your eyes adjusted yet?” Damian asks, glancing down at him. At Tim’s silence, he rolls his eyes. “Can you see?” Apparently taking Tim’s continued silence as a no, he sighs and steps forward. “Then I shan’t put you down yet.”

Tim makes a face, weighing the potential advantage of Damian not realizing he can see now against his desire to not be princess-carried around like a sack of potatoes.

Keeping his ability to see secret wins. It’s definitely nothing to do with how good it feels to be pressed against Damian’s chest, smelling his pleasant, spicy scent and feeling his warmth… Tim shakes his head, shoving those thoughts away. The demon is attractive, sure—more like gorgeous, tall and strong and beautiful in the manner of his kind, but that’s no reason for him to act like a fool over it. There’s no way this demon has his best interests at heart, occasional moments of surprising gentleness or not.

Tim keeps his mouth shut as Damian walks right up to one of the many rocky outcrops surrounding them and reaches out a faintly glowing hand. Matching golden light races in gilded lines from his fingertips, arcane runes of brilliant gold bursting to life across the surface of the stone. After a moment, deeper lines appear in the shape of a doorway, which sinks into the stone and slides aside as a wave of power radiates out from the demon. 

Damian walks in, casually murmuring a spell, and lights come on in what Tim is surprised to see looks like a normal, if slightly formal, living room.

“What,” Tim says, looking around in growing disbelief, “is this?” He waves a hand to indicate the ridiculous normality surrounding them.

Frowning, Damian follows his gesture and then looks back at him, a slightly helpless expression of confusion on his face. “My couch?”

“No!” Tim rolls his eyes and huffs. “A second ago we were in the Dark Lands, marching to my eventual torture and probably death! You just used demonic magic to open a stone! Why are we in a freaking _normal house?_ ” With rising indignation, he pushes against Damian’s stupid broad chest until he sets him down, then marches over to look out the window he can see across the room. “Scratch that—is this one of the apartments on the Upper East Side?”

Damian shifts, looking uncomfortable. “In a way.”

Peering through the window, Tim can see the reservoir in the distance, late-night joggers visible on the trails in Robinson Park. Turning slowly to stare at his companion in rising disbelief and indignation, he says, “Are you telling me you just brought us back to Gotham for the night? After all that effort dragging me here, we’re back? I just—” He flails, too frustrated to continue.

“Ah,” Damian says, baffled expression clearing. “No, actually. I merely juxtaposed the interior of my home in Gotham over this space for the time being. Physically, we are still in the Dark Lands. The travelers’ runes are placed along all the common byways here, and activating them usually simply provides a stone cave for travelers to shelter in. Those with the power to both activate and modify the runes can do more. I chose to use this because I thought it would make you more comfortable.” He clears his throat, looking supremely awkward, then abruptly spins on his heel and strides stiffly toward what Tim belatedly notices is an attached kitchen.

Wow. That’s… actually a really cool trick. Maybe he can ask Bruce to help him craft an amulet for that, when he gets back. If he gets back. Hmm, even if they aren’t actually entirely back in Gotham, maybe it will be possible for him to open a window and at least get a message out—

As Tim edges slowly toward the window, Damian’s voice calls out from the kitchen. “And do not attempt to leave. If you open either the door or a window, all you will see on the other side is cold stone.”

Great. Okay, fine. Tim crosses his arms and flops down on the couch with a loud huff. It’s… Huh, it’s actually really comfortable. He melts into the cushy furniture and glances around. Disappointingly, it looks like a really normal apartment—oversized furniture in somber, dark colors, what looks like an instrument case tucked in the corner by the window, heavy bookshelves laden with what appears to be a mix of normal books and books of spells, and—his brows rise as he notices the beautiful artwork tastefully mounted and hung on the walls.

Rising to his feet, he wanders over to get a better look at the nearest painting. If his steps happen to carry him closer to the bookshelves where there just might be a few stray talismans or bottled spells he might be able to palm, well, that’s just happenstance.

There aren’t any loose bits of magic laying around, unfortunately, but the artistry of the painting distracts him from his momentary disappointment. It depicts a beautiful woman, standing on a rocky escarpment looking out over a tumbled sea. Her dark eyes seem to flash, conveying a sense of danger and loss—or maybe that’s the faint twist to her full lips. Her dark hair swirls and lashes around her shoulders and Tim can almost feel the wind, whipping the waves into a white-topped frenzy.

The layered oils in different colors create texturing and an illusion of depth which almost makes the painting seem to be alive. Actually… He narrows his eyes, searching it for glamours or enchantments lending it the appearance of movement, but finds nothing. It’s all skill, the careful placement of dabs of white and gold paint here and there giving the work a sense of light and movement.

It’s glorious. “Beautiful,” he whispers.

“My mother,” Damian says, making him jump at the deep voice right in his ear. “Yes, she was quite beautiful.”

Tim turns to look at him, easily seeing the resemblance now that it’s been pointed out. The high cheekbones, proud, arched eyebrows, full lips and flashing eyes framed by thick, black lashes are a perfect match. There are hints of another influence in Damian’s square jawline and the shape of his brow and nose, but otherwise he looks very much like his mother.

“Was?” Tim asks before he has time to think better of poking at what might be a painful wound.

Damian sighs, turning away and striding back to the kitchen where he gestures toward a table, upon which a delicious-smelling meal is laid out and ready. “She has been gone for nearly a year now.” He eyes Tim until he sits at the table and starts poking at his food with the fork. Rolling his eyes, he takes a seat himself. “I assure you, it is not poisoned. That would be quite counterproductive, considering I need you well and functional to retrieve my Grandfather’s property.”

Tim huffs, then relaxes, acknowledging the logic of that statement. He takes a small bite of the food, then digs in once he realizes how hungry he is and how delicious the stir fry the demon apparently threw together on a moment’s notice is. Actually, there was probably a little magic involved in how quickly the meal was prepared.

It’s some time later and his plate is almost empty when he opens his mouth to talk instead of cram more food into it. “So you’re living with your grandfather now? Were you guys close before, or…?” It’s a good idea to get the lay of the land. Any minor details he’s able to gather now could be crucial for his survival later.

“Ah,” Damian says, swirling the wine in his glass. “No, Mother and I lived a quiet life for the most part, moving from city to city. We rarely stayed in one place for long because Mother preferred to show me the world. I never saw the Dark Lands until after she died, when Grandfather appeared at the funeral and told me he was my last family and would like a chance to get to know me. Ra’s al Ghul… I had never heard his name before, but he was able to demonstrate the truth of his words.”

Tim’s starting to get a bad feeling about this. He shouldn’t, but he has to ask… “How did she, uh, die?”

Damian gives him a flat stare, and he can’t help but wince at his own blunt rudeness. Still, it’s suspicious. A woman moving from place to place and apparently keeping herself and her child apart from her powerful, probably-evil father, then dying suspiciously. It’s starting to add up to form a picture he doesn’t like. Damian may be his captor, but it’s possible he’s just another pawn in all this.

It’s smart to consider all aspects of the situation. The fact that Damian is devastatingly attractive, kinder than he seems at first glance, and smells amazing has nothing to do with it.

“I do not know,” the demon says eventually. “She simply did not awaken one morning. The human pathologists could find no cause, and Grandfather assured me his magics likewise detected nothing.” The brooding set of his shoulders warns Tim it’s time to stop asking questions, but it’s the pain in those dark eyes that stills his tongue.

Scraping up the last of the food on his plate, he stuffs it into his mouth to keep from following the mystery. Once he’s sure he can control his curiosity about touchy personal matters, he changes the subject. “So, you juxtaposed a portion of Gotham over the same sized area in the Dark Lands? How does that work? I mean, the Dark Lands and mundane realm are already juxtaposed over each other, and I know we traveled well beyond Gotham so this isn’t just tearing through the veil to show what’s on the other side.” He frowns, staring into space tapping his fork on his plate as his mind offers possible explanations. “Unless you used a transposition matrix in the spell—I couldn’t tell because I didn’t recognize the language of the runes you used.” He glances up, finally realizing his companion isn’t answering, and blushes. “Ah, sorry. I’m interested in esoteric magics and sometimes I forget not everyone is into that.”

Damian is staring at him with a focused expression. “I’m into that,” he blurts out, then flushes. He clears his throat and straightens in a visible attempt to regain his dignity. “I mean, I also study esoteric magics. Tell me, have you ever heard of an Abadi Transformation? When combined with Renard’s Theorem of Magical Continuity it is possible to grasp the infinity of space and fold it such that—”

Tim’s eyes widen; that’s brilliant! “Any two points identified as matching integers during the Abadi Transformation would then be juxtaposed, with the primary integer taking precedence over the secondary such that _that_ is what the observer sees even though both are equally present!” That’s awesome. He grins, happy to have someone to talk magic theory with besides Bruce, who isn’t the best teacher and tends to trail off in thought at random, seemingly without noticing he didn’t finish his sentence.

“Yes,” Damian breathes, green eyes wide. “That’s…” He blinks, shaking his head, then looks at Tim with an almost wondering expression. “I never knew a mundane to have such depth of knowledge regarding magiphysics. Grandfather says—” He breaks off, looking guilty.

Tim frowns. “What does he say? It’s only fair you tell me, since I’m going to be meeting him soon.”

“He says humans are lesser beings, fit only for service at best and destruction at worst.” The demon has the grace to look slightly apologetic. “I perhaps do not entirely agree—however, it is not my place to question him.” 

“Well that’s a load of shit,” Tim says, then snickers when Damian raises scandalized eyes. “No, really. An entire race of beings shouldn’t be stereotyped and judged like that. It’s dumb. I mean, of course the reverse is true—humans tend to fear and stereotype magical beings, and demons in particular are, well, demonized. But that’s not fair. There’s good and bad in everyone and no one should be forced into a role just because of their heritage. Teaching someone that is wrong.”

Damian stares at him as he speaks, a frown gathering on his brow, then bursts out, “That is easy for you to say, but for me nothing is so simple! You have a sunlit world at your fingertips, friends who stand in lieu of family, and the opportunity for more. I have only Grandfather, and I must strive each day to earn his approval. Easy for you to say we are not the roles we were born into when you have so many choices open to you. I don’t—” He breaks off, looking horrified as a wave of demonic power rolls out of him, the magic so thick as to be faintly visible. It looks like nothing so much as golden smoke, roiling and crackling with green undertones.

It must have been involuntary. If he lost control of his power like this, then his emotional response right now must be immense, a storm of conflict hidden behind those green eyes.

That doesn’t help Tim, knowing he’s about to be slammed by pure demonic power. He barely has time to take a breath before the wave hits. He braces—demonic power made physical is known to have varying properties, depending on the age, type, and temperament of the demon involved. Sometimes it’s hot to the point of burning, other times caustic or icy cold. He hopes Damian’s won’t be enough to actually injure him.

The rolling wave of gold and green swirls and eddies around him. The first thing he feels is warm, but not unpleasantly so. In fact… He gasps, his head falling back and his mouth dropping open on a soft gasp as heat pours through him, pooling in his lower belly and causing his pants to suddenly feel much tighter. In fact, all his clothes feel wrong now, itchy and uncomfortable. He moans softly, wanting, his fingers scrambling to reach for his shirt, and—

Strong, warm fingers close over his as a deep, distressed-sounding voice murmurs, “No, no, you don’t want to do that. Timothy, stop, breathe.” The hand continues to hold his and he becomes aware of another steadying hand on his shoulder as the thrilling heat and desire dissipate as suddenly as they came.

Sucking in deep breaths as though he just rose to the surface after being underwater, Tim opens eyes he hadn’t realized were closed. The first thing he sees is Damian’s worried, guilty-looking face. “You’re an _incubus?”_ he hisses, feeling betrayed on a deeper level than he should considering Damian’s the asshole who kidnapped him, relatable and likeable or not. Ugh, now everything is starting to make sense, pieces falling into place one by one to form an ugly picture. “Oh my god, I can’t believe I was starting to actually _like_ you. You’ve been playing me, sending out your stupid sexy powers to make me like your stupid sexy face and shoulders and hands, and all the time you’ve just been trying to soften me up so I’ll make your job easier.”

Damian’s just blinking at him, his mouth hanging open slightly. “You— _what?”_

Tim rolls his eyes and shakes himself free of the demon’s hands. “No wonder I’m so attracted to you, you fiend!”

“You’re… attracted to me?” Damian’s mouth finally closes and he swallows, looking uncharacteristically vulnerable. “Except for the incident just now, which was entirely unintentional and regrettable, I have not been using my powers.”

The silence which follows that statement is ringing.

Tim uses the time to work up a full-body blush. The skin of his face feels like it’s on fire. “Ah,” he says. Of course Damian wasn’t using his powers before—if Tim had been thinking and not just reacting, he would have realized that any earlier instances of glamours or other incubus-related powers would have been visible to him, just like any other magic. He clears his throat, pretty sure there is literally nothing he can say right now to save himself from the embarrassment of this moment. “In that case, let’s just forget about everything I just said, okay?”

Damian nods, still looking stunned, cheeks lightly tinted. “I… would not use my power in such a way. I prefer not to access or use those powers, actually. Mother…” He looks away. “Mother was half succubus and required sustenance she could only obtain through use of those powers. I am only a quarter incubus and can survive without the energy gathered through such encounters as she was forced to seek out.”

Well, that’s a loaded bit of history. Tim bites his lip, wondering if this is another area he shouldn’t pry. “Do you just not want to?”

“I have never desired it, and the thought of such an intimacy with one with whom I have no connection is repugnant to me.”

Tim nods. He can relate to that. “Well, good thing you don’t have to then.” He clears his throat, feeling awkward under Damian’s warm, steady gaze. “Anyway, where am I supposed to sleep? If I’m meeting your evil grandpa in the morning, I need to rest up to be ready for a full day of torture.” He chuckles at the annoyed look the demon sends him.

“As I said before, if you would simply reveal the artifact’s location—!” Damian shakes his head and stalks down the hallway, throwing open a door to reveal a simply furnished bedroom, clearly a guest room.

Tim steps through, sighing in happiness when he notices the door leading to an ensuite. He can see a shower in there and fully intends to take advantage of it. “Not gonna happen.” However likeable Damian is, his grandfather is still an unknown but probably evil quantity. Not to mention, Tim still has no idea what or where the artifact even is.

“You must.” The pain in that whispered reply has him turning, startled eyes seeking out his companion, but the bedroom door is already closed. And locked or sealed, he determines when he tries to open it. Oh well. Time enough to face things again in the morning.

For now, he’s going to search every inch of this room for potentially useful items, take a long shower, and then crash on the bed for however many hours he has left until his inevitable torture and demise.

He closes his eyes as the silvery strains of mournful music, played on what sounds like a violin, begin to drift through the door a few minutes after he finally lies down. It’s as beautiful as it is haunting, and follows him into his dreams.

* * *

The rest of the journey passes quietly, neither of them finding much to say the closer they get to the end. The oppressive air and darkness of the Dark Lands seems even worse after the night passed in Damian’s apartment, with its simple color scheme and gorgeous art splashed across the walls and the almost companionable time they spent there.

They finally make it to an enormous, twisted gate formed of some unearthly metal after a seemingly interminable travel. Maybe it just seems like it takes longer because Tim’s stuck walking on his own legs this time instead of being carried like a baby.

He’s not about to protest the change—he has too much dignity for that—but he can’t help but remember the quiet thump of Damian’s heart in his ear, his enticing scent and the low vibration of his voice. It’s a far cry from the depressing cold and weariness of this walk.

“Nanda Parbat,” Damian murmurs, breaking what feels like hours of silence as they gaze upon the black gates of the city. He whispers something in a sibilant, unrecognizable tongue that seems to grow echoes as he continues to speak, and then the gates begin to slide open with a terrible grinding sound.

Turning to Tim, he opens his mouth as though to say something more, hesitates for a moment, and then closes his mouth. He sets his jaw and his shoulders and steps through the gate. As though in answer, a wave of fell power sweeps over them both. Something is watching them, something dark and powerful.

Tim briefly considers the merits of fleeing screaming into the darkness, but he’s pretty sure whatever it is would catch him before he got ten steps. Or maybe send Damian to catch him. Either way, his best chance seems to be to play along and try to find out as much as he can about this place, the power structure here, and any cracks in the foundations he may be able to use.

“This way,” Damian murmurs, taking his elbow in a firm but careful grip. Ah, so fleeing into the darkness is definitely off the table then.

Tim follows in the direction Damian leads, taking more comfort in the hand on his arm than he probably should as they pass through empty cobbled streets lined with what look like shops and homes, all silent but for soft scurrying sounds and what might be whispers, just at the edge of his hearing. It takes him a while to realize there are no markings of carving or joins, no seams on any of the structures to differentiate them from the stone. It’s almost as though the entire city just grew here, formed of the same onyx rock as what lies beneath their feet.

They walk through the city, seeing nothing but shades that duck out of sight at their approach. Tim distracts himself from his impending doom by noting various architectural wonders that he’s just itching to photograph; midair pathways that are clearly supported by magic and wreathed in glowing plants, intricate geometric flying buttresses as thin and delicate as lace or spiderwebs, towering spires, and elaborate archways carved with the faces of various demonic creatures. Less pleasant to see are the occasional murals depicting terrible demonic actions, battles won and cities ravaged by fire and violence, and the twisted statues of monsters that seem ready to spring to life and lash out at passerby any moment.

Damian leads him across a massive bridge that crosses a river that smells and looks like blood, wrinkling his nose at the reek of it while Tim does his best to suppress his gagging. The feeling of being watched is only increasing. There are strange looking ghost-white trees lining the path on the other side, and through the trunks he can see several heavily armed and masked higher level demons observing their progress. A demoness in a green cat mask nearly approaches, only to change her mind and melt into the shadows with a sharp laugh when the Princeling glares at her.

Damian leads him through the streets and up the steps of a grand palace, all twisted turrets and spires formed of the same black rock as the rest of the city, crouched atop the hill in the city center. It all seems a bit much. This grandfather of his clearly thinks a lot of himself.

When they step into the palace, he winces, blinking back tears at the flare of sickly green flames burning in sconces which line the halls. “Ah,” Damian says, looking apologetic. “Do you need a moment to adjust to the light?” He’s clearly having no trouble at all. Stupid demon physiology.

“I’m fine,” Tim says, blinking a few more times. “Let’s just get this over with.”

They continue down the halls, their footsteps echoing, until they reach broad doors, gilded and filigreed with a metal too dark to be gold which gleams like poison in the flickering green light. At their approach, the doors swing open, silent as the rest of this creepy journey into what Tim is starting to fear may be a city of the dead.

He gets an impression of a vast space filled with ornate decorations and glittering bounty, arranged throughout the room like a treasure trove. His gaze is riveted to the high throne, sculpted of the same living black stone which forms the entire city.

“What have you brought me, Grandson?” The smooth, silky voice sends a shiver through Tim as he sees and feels another wave of power roll out, the same dark and powerful magic that touched him as they entered the city gates. It carries with it a sense of great age, coupled with feelings of mild curiosity and interest which suddenly triple in intensity for no reason Tim can name. “Oh, I see,” the voice purrs as they approach the throne. “Well done, Grandson—most well done. You have pleased me.”

At Tim’s side, Damian’s breath catches and he freezes for a moment before continuing to move smoothly forward. “I am honored to serve you, Grandfather.” He stops at the foot of the dias upon which the throne sits and bows deeply before nudging Tim to do the same.

Tim doesn’t. Instead, he raises an eyebrow at the whole setup. This guy definitely takes himself too seriously. “Really? Because the way I see it, you sent Damian to hunt down an artifact my parents allegedly took from one of your old lairs or whatever, not to drag me back here instead.” He doesn’t want to throw Damian under the bus, but the guy did totally fail in his stated purpose. That really doesn’t seem like something his grandfather should be pleased about.

The demon on the throne chuckles, his dark hair and brilliant green eyes glinting in the dim light. So this is Ra’s al Ghul, the demon king. Tim is not impressed. The demon ignores Tim’s question completely, looking at Damian instead with an expression that looks more like avarice than love. “Yes, Grandson, you have performed admirably. I requested you return to me a valuable possession, and you have brought me one even more _desirable_ than I expected.” He turns his hungry gaze to Tim then and licks his lips.

What the hell?

This is not what Tim signed up for. Well, okay, he didn’t sign up for any of this, but whatever that look and those words are implying seems somehow even worse than the torture and eventual death he’s been steeling himself to endure.

“What do you mean, Grandfather?” Damian says, shifting infinitesimally closer so he’s in front of Tim, shielding him partially with his body. Apparently he’s kind of creeped out by this, too. Good.

“You’ve found my mirror—a more difficult task than I realized when I set it for you—and returned it to me. The fact that the mirror’s power has somehow been imbued into this delicious young human merely adds to its potential avenues of… use.” His thick tongue darts out again to wet his lips as his lurid green gaze flicks up and down Tim’s body and okay, this is officially gross.

“Did you say mirror?” Tim’s mind immediately changes tracks, running through his mental catalogue and trying to recall the properties of every mirror in his parents’ collection.Then his brain screeches to a halt as the demon’s final words sink in. “Wait, what do you mean, the power is imbued into me?” That sounds… concerning.

Ra’s smirks. “Ah, did my young grandson fail to elucidate the properties of the item he came to retrieve? No matter. I can do so now. It was a polished obsidian and gryphon bone mirror, carved with runes and holding the power to view truth, no matter how powerful or layered the magical deception. A priceless item for which I have searched from the moment I realized it was missing.”

Something inside of Tim is unraveling, but he’s too busy deconstructing what the demon just said to figure out what. Obsidian makes sense, with its known properties of cutting through the veil and dispelling illusions. And it’s impossible to lie in the presence of a gryphon, so with some extremely dark magic and breaking a few dozen ethical rules it would definitely be possible to concentrate that magic and tie it to the bones. And a mirror, for clear sight and scrying. It all hangs together and makes sense.

The problem is, he can picture it perfectly, the image of a little round mirror of bone and shining stone so black it looked like a hole in the world visible in exquisite detail in his mind’s eye. He shouldn’t be able to see it so clearly, not when this definitely isn’t one of the items he and the others found in his parents’ house. It’s almost like he’s seen it before, though…

“What happened, I wonder?” Ra’s says, tilting his head and regarding Tim with a heavy lidded gaze. “You must have been very young to have absorbed the power instead of rejecting it. And the mirror must have been shattered—I doubt that any of its powers would have adhered to you unless your skin was pierced by the shards.”

Damian makes a soft noise, sounding distressed.

Tim can’t think about that right now, not when he’s frozen in place by the demon king’s words. Memory rolls through him and he can’t quite hold back a soft whimper. “It was on the edge of the table,” he says softly, hardly aware he’s talking. “I must have been so young—I remember having to stand on my toes to even reach it. I just wanted to look. I didn’t mean to break it, I was just curious because Mother and Father had seemed so interested in it before they left.”

He takes a shaky breath. “When it fell, I was so scared they’d be mad. I cleaned up the mess as best I could and hid the pieces in a little box, then stuffed it in the back of a shelf behind some funerary urns.” His hands clench and unclench as he remembers the sharp sting where the shards broke the skin. “It worked, I guess. They never even noticed it was missing when they got home.”

Something brushes against his shoulder and he looks up to see Damian standing right there, a solid presence at his side. Blinking back sudden tears, he sniffs loudly and scrubs at his eyes. Geez, he shouldn’t be so overwhelmed by a forgotten memory. Although it is nice to finally have some answers as to how he got his powers in the first place. 

Tim has tiny silvery scars from the accident across his forehead and scalp, and undoubtedly some splinters were left inside his body, embedded beneath his skin and staying there as he grew. Obsidian is notorious for shattering into tiny fine shards, and those shards are extremely hard for an adult to remove, much less a tiny panicked child.

“I see,” Ra’s says, sounding pleased. “Yes, that is as I suspected.” His lips twist and stretch in a Mephistophelian smirk. “How fascinating. I desired the mirror back to use it as a tool to more easily manipulate the greedy fools who dwell in the mundane realm. It will be even easier using _you_ , a seemingly innocuous mundane, to do my bidding. Wealth, power, souls—all will be mine for the taking.”

Well, that’s not good.

The demon king’s smirk widens and when he opens his mouth again, Tim already knows it’s to say something awful. “As you are not physically displeasing, you can make yourself useful at night, as well. It has been many decades since I had someone of your type warming my bed.” His gaze glitters with lust as his tongue darts out to wet his thin lips.

And there it is. Tim chokes back his reflexive gag. Ew.

Damian takes a shaky breath, shoulders hunching forward as though bracing against an invisible blow, and then straightens. He shakes his head as he steps forward to stand fully in front of Tim. “No,” he says in a ringing voice that nearly hides the tremor Tim can see in his hands. “I will not allow you to do this.”

Holy shit. Tim looks from Damian’s back over to Ra’s and blanches at the expression of rage on the demon king’s face.

“How _dare_ you?” Ra’s thunders, dark power rising to fill the chamber in an oppressive wave. “After all I have done for you, all I have given you, you think to challenge _me?”_

Damian’s shoulders tighten and his hands clench at his side as he braces himself against the force of his grandfather’s magic. Tim’s knees buckle under the strain and he almost falls, saved only by one of Damian’s hands reaching back to catch his wrist and lend support. He ends up leaning into Damian’s broad back, wishing all the while for any of his battle amulets, potions or talismans.

His Sight, cleverness, and creativity usually more than make up for his lack of innate magic, but in that moment he would trade them all for the brute offensive power Bruce naturally has in spades.

Dimly, he can feel the crushing force of Ra’s al Ghul’s dark, painful power begin to recede, and it takes him a second to realize the reason. The gentle curl of Damian’s magic wraps around him like a warm blanket, protecting him from the demon king’s magic. “Damian,” he whispers, fear and gratitude swirling in a confusing maelstrom at his captor’s show of support. “You can’t stand against him. It’s not worth—”

“You were right,” Damian bites out between clenched teeth. “Humans are not lesser beings, and no one should be forced into a role they despise merely because of their heritage. I have fought my doubts for too long, and I will not continue to serve a cause I have come to believe is wrong.”

On the throne, Ra’s hisses, lips drawn back to bare his teeth in a fierce facsimile of a smile. “Ah, Grandson, I would have preferred to continue to do this the easy way. I should have known you’d be rebellious. Just like your mother.”

Oh no. Tim feels Damian’s back go tense and he wraps his arms around him, trying to lend him whatever support he can for whatever’s about to be revealed. Everything he knows about Damian’s mother and how he came to be here screams that Ra’s had something to do with her death.

“What do you mean?” Damian says, his voice very soft and flat.

Ra’s scowls. “Your mother was always… difficult. I blame her maternal parentage—the succubus I lay with was unworthy of the honor I bestowed upon her, and your mother was worse. Always questioning my orders, wondering why we needed to kill, to dominate, to destroy everything that stood in our way. More than once, she granted mercy where I had ordered her to annihilate. She fled me as soon as she was old and powerful enough to hide herself from my sight, taking my mirror and hiding in some obscure human ruin it so I could not use it to find her.”

Damian’s back is rigid. “And then?”

“It took me nearly two decades to track her down. Imagine my surprise when I discovered she had procreated during that time, providing me a new tool to work with. Half human, which is unfortunate, but still quite useful. All I had to do was… _remove_ … her undesirable influence.” He throws his head back and the chamber echoes with his cruel laughter.

The sound that rips from Damian’s throat is otherworldly as he hunches forward, muscles bulging and ripping through his shirt as he _grows._ He throws back his head, fine spiralling horns twice as long as before, and roars. The familiar blanket of his power unfurls and actually pushes back against the demon king’s magic until Ra’s stares at him, eyes wide in what looks like shock. “You should not be this powerful,” he whispers. “Who was your father? This feels…” He shakes his head, blinking, and turns to stare at the entrance. “Impossible,” he breathes, a moment before the walls cave inward and a powerful wave of familiar and very welcome magic washes away the last traces of the demon king’s crushing power.

“He’s here,” Tim whispers, arms curling tighter around Damian, who twists to place Tim behind himself as he tries to face off against both potential threats. “Sh, it’s okay Damian, everything’s going to be okay now.” Turning to face the entrance where the dust and debris is still settling, he calls out, “You better have brought my arsenal!”

The answer, a tiny shuriken with curiously dulled blades that comes spinning out of the dust cloud toward him with unerring accuracy, brings a vicious grin to his face. Finally. He catches it in one hand, satisfaction pouring through him at having his sealed arsenal in hand. He unseals the armor first, letting out a relieved sigh as his familiar battle armor locks into place around him, each piece bespelled with every manner of protective and defensive magic Alfred and Bruce could think of between them. The armaments are next—Damian flinches when he activates his balefire shield, and Tim curses as he quickly keys the demon’s magical signature into his defenses. Accidentally immolating an ally is no way to repay him for his belated effort to help.

He secures his bandoliers last, careful not to run his fingers over the tiny inscriptions that each seal a different weapon. A single touch shouldn’t be enough to unseal any of them—there’s a specific pattern of movement that does that—but better safe than sorry. The last thing he needs is any of his explosive, corrosive, or otherwise incredibly destructive spellwork running rampant. 

By the time he’s fully armed and prepared for battle, it’s well and truly engaged. Spears of raging green fire flicker and soar across the chamber, stopping in the center where a great shield of pitch black power is slowly inching forward, gaining ground against the green flames. The Dark Knight is visible now, forcing his way step by step into the chamber as he slowly approaches the throne against the onslaught. His black shield absorbs each blow and thickens as he takes the demonic energy and turns it against its originator.

Wow. Watching Bruce really let loose is always intense, but this is beyond anything Tim has ever seen. He watches the battle for a few seconds, scanning the chamber, and that’s why he’s the first one to see the lesser demons creeping down the walls. Of course Ra’s al Ghul has minions. Smirking, he pops a couple of potion vials free from his bandoliers, takes aim, and tosses them.

The screams of the demonic minions as they’re trapped in spires of ice is music to his ears.

At his side, Damian roars again and grabs another pair of lesser demons who were apparently trying to sneak up on Tim. The crunch and splatter that follows is impressive, but it seems they have attracted attention. Or, more likely, Ra’s ordered his minions to focus on securing Tim. Either way, they’re surrounded.

Tim reaches for his bandoliers again, trying to calculate which area effect spell will work best for close quarters against lesser demons while not accidentally hurting any of his allies. As his fingers close around another bottle and Damian braces, growling, there’s a stir among the lesser demons surrounding them. “What…?”

Lesser demons are dropping with howls and screeches, nothing to show what’s taking them down except a faint blur in the air. Could it be—?

The blur suddenly comes to a halt in front of him and it’s Bart, grinning and hugging him despite his stiff armor. “Tim! Oh my gosh I can’t believe we finally found you, you won’t _believe_ what we had to do to track you down! You know that emerald watch we found? Well we thought it was the item the demons wanted, and we brought it to Bruce because he’s your mentor and we knew he’d follow you to hell _literally_ and that’s pretty much what we figured we’d have to do to find you, right? So we did, and he did, but when he looked at the watch he said it wasn’t for human life cycles at all just _plants_ so we gave it to Alfred ‘cause he likes to garden so he’s using it to time when to harvest his vegetables or something, isn’t that crash? Anyway—” He breaks off as a particularly foolish lesser demon takes the chance to leap at Tim.

Bart blurs, Damian roars and brings down a huge fist, and Tim unleashes his next area effect spell. The subsequent silence and utter lack of attacking lesser demons in their vicinity speaks for itself.

He blinks, then quickly scans the battlefield again. If Bart’s here, then Kon and Cassie must be around somewhere, too. Relief surges when he sees them, Kon defending Bruce’s back so he can focus on Ra’s as Cassie flutters high overhead, intercepting and disabling attacks from above.

His friends are so awesome.

It doesn’t take long after that. The inexorable press of Bruce’s magic coupled with his ability to absorb and use Ra’s al Ghul’s own power against him—Tim winces to see him overusing that transformation array to this extent, Bruce is going to be recovering from this for _weeks_ at this rate—overwhelms even the demon king eventually.

As he twists in bonds of black magic, powerful enough to hold even a demon of his stature, Ra’s sneers. “Detective,” he says, silken voice frayed and edged, “tell me. What tortuous path of clues did you trace to find us here?”

Bart pipes up from where he and the others are grouped protectively around Tim. “Oh, we told him!” At the demon king’s blank look, he adds, “We’re Tim’s friends? You know, the ones who were there when he was kidnapped and everything.”

Ra’s turns his incredulous gaze to Damian. “You didn’t kill them?” He sounds indignant. “Truly, you were ever unworthy to be called my grandson. You’re just like your mother, a disappointment—”

Damian clears his throat, wrapping his thankfully normal-sized arm around Tim and drawing him close. His transformation was apparently temporary and he shrank back down to his usual form a few seconds after Ra’s was subdued. “It seemed unnecessary.”

Bruce just looks at Ra’s. “Once I heard the name Damian al Ghul, I knew exactly where to look.” He directs a measuring glance at Damian before looking at Ra’s again. “I had not realized you had any grandchildren,” he says slowly. “Talia never said anything about a nephew—” He breaks off, a pucker forming between his eyebrows as he looks at Damian again.

Ra’s begins to smirk, an awful expression of sick triumph twisting his face. “That is because the boy is Talia’s,” he says, lurid green eyes lit with horrible glee. “And, I presume, yours.”

Bruce twitches, barely moving, but even the smallest reactions are telling. “Mine?” he whispers, his magic reaching out to wrap around Damian. It’s not the hard, emotionless black wall of before. Instead, it’s the softer, more protective gray mist he uses when he’s checking Tim over searching for injuries. “Mine,” he says again as his magic presumably finds whatever he was searching for. “I don’t… How?”

Snorting, Ra’s begins, “When a human meets a succubus—”

“Ew,” Kon says, sounding disgusted, then looks apologetic when Bruce glares at him. Cassie snickers but subsides when Bruce turns the glare on her. Bart opens his mouth only for Tim to slam a hand over it. No need to make this worse.

Damian makes a distressed noise and Bruce shakes his head, looking impatient. “I knew Talia was a succubus. I also knew she never once used her power on me. We were in love… or I thought we were. But she left. I thought it meant she hadn’t cared, but…” He looks at Damian again with a pained expression. “I wish I knew her reasons for hiding this.”

Ra’s cackles. “You’ll never know, and it will haunt you. I took my daughter far beyond your reach and I will never—” He breaks off, looking wary at the sudden intensely interested expression on Bruce’s face.

“She isn’t dead?” Bruce leans forward, power gathering.

Damian shakes his head, looking puzzled and grieved. “She did die, though. I found her in her bed one morning, silent and cold. There was nothing to explain why it happened—”

The corner of Bruce’s mouth lifts in what counts for him as a smile. “I see,” he says, and reaches out his magic, and _pulls._

Ra’s screams, his body arching in place. He shakes so hard it seems he would rattle right out of his skin if it weren’t for the black bonds of Bruce’s magic holding him in place. In fact, he _is_ —something nebulous and person-shaped is being pulled from him, moving out of his body in halting jerks as Bruce continues to coax it forth with his power.

Tim and the others all take a large step back, eyes wide at whatever the hell Bruce is doing right now. It’s only when the form is completely free of the demon king’s body and begins to solidify into a female shape that they realize what is happening.

Tumbling waves of lustrous black hair fall over her shoulders as Talia al Ghul raises her head and stares at Bruce with flashing dark eyes. “Beloved,” she murmurs. “Thank you.” And she collapses gracefully into his arms.

“Holy shit!” Kon blurts out. Cassie clears her throat and snaps her fingers, pulling a diaphanous robe shimmering with fairy dust out of the air to wrap around the nude woman’s shoulders.

“What the heck did he _do?”_ Bart leans forward, peering at Ra’s who seems to have lost consciousness after his ordeal.

Damian remains frozen at Tim’s side, seemingly unable to comprehend what just happened. “Mother?” he says in a soft voice, sounding lost.

The woman stirs, raising her head and smiling with dark eyes focusing on Damian like he’s the only thing in the room. “My son,” she murmurs, then closes her eyes again with a soft sigh. “How I have failed you.”

With a low noise, Damian shakes his head. His mother steps out of Bruce’s embrace with a murmur of thanks, moves forward, and gently wraps her arms around her son.

“I should have realized you weren’t really dead, Mother. If I had only investigated more, I would not have spent these last months serving the very one who took you from me!”

She frowns, brushing a tear from beneath his eye with long, delicate fingers. “You did exactly as you had to in order to survive. I would change nothing except the greed and cruelty which led my father to such a dark path.”

Bart tilts his head, still eyeing Ra’s al Ghul’s still form where he lies crumpled in the chains of Bruce’s power. “Wait, back up—I’m still stuck on the way you just showed up out of thin air. Like, what was up with that? Not that I’m not glad you’re here, you seem really chill especially for being related to that guy—” He pokes at Ra’s for a moment before Cassie catches his hand and shakes her head warningly.

“I’m curious, too,” Kon says. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Bruce nods, seeming unable to speak as he gazes at Talia and their son.

Talia returns his gaze with a rueful shrug. “I should have considered the possibility my father could draw my soul to himself. After all, my power came from his and it would be just like him to find a way to take it back and use it. By the time I felt him pulling, it was too late. Since then, all I have been able to do is see through his eyes and hear through his ears.” Turning back to Damian, she raises a hand to cup his cheek. “I was never so afraid as when I saw you stand against him.”

He winces, looking guilty. His gaze darts to Tim before returning. “Mother, I—”

“Never so proud, either,” she whispers, her face breaking into a lovely smile. “You are everything I ever hoped you would grow to become.”

A soft hissing sound draws their attention back to the chains holding Ra’s al Ghul’s unconscious body. The chains appear to be contracting. Tim raises an eyebrow, looking at Bruce with mild worry. Has the discovery of a previously unknown son, the captivity of a woman he apparently loved once, and Tim’s own kidnapping finally pushed him over some inner edge? If the Dark Knight is about to break his own rule against killing, well…

At least he couldn’t have chosen a more deserving candidate to destroy.

After a moment, though, he sees the chains aren’t contracting, just pulsing as waves of shimmering magic rise from the demon king and then disappear into the chains with each pulse. “What exactly are you doing with him, B?” His eyes widen as the chains contract again, this time releasing a wave of magic which hovers in the air for a moment before effervescing away like foam on the sea.

Bruce watches in silence as another wave of magic is drawn from the demon and captured by the chains, to be dissipated in its turn. “I’m continuing the process which freed Talia—taking that which does not belong to Ra’s and returning it to its original owners.” He frowns, tilting his head. “Or their closest living descendants, as the case may be. It seems many of those he stole his power from are now deceased. Once all he has left is his own innate power, he will be substantially weakened and it should be possible to safely and effectively imprison him.”

“Huh,” Kon says, watching with an interested expression as another wave of magic vanishes, presumably off to the surface world to attach itself to some unsuspecting descendant of one of al Ghul’s many victims. “Soo… How weak are we talking here? Like, is he still going to be a higher order demon? Or…”

Bruce shrugs, looking like he doesn’t much care as long as Ra’s ends up in whatever terrifying magical prison he has in mind for him.

Talia chuckles darkly, stroking Damian’s hair. “My father never spoke of his own origins, which leads me to suspect they were far from impressive. I rather look forward to seeing him without the trappings of his ill-gotten power.”

As it happens, by the time Bruce’s chains of power finally subside and go gray, Ra’s isn’t a higher order demon. He isn’t even a lesser order demon.

“What the heck?” Tim says, staring in amazement at the wizened, decrepit-looking _mundane human_ which Ra’s, stripped of all his might, turned out to be. “I just… _how?”_

They all stare in silence as Bruce calmly tosses a set of binding shackles at Ra’s, where they clasp around his wrists and ankles and glow bright white with a flash as the teleportation spell automatically activates. Ra’s flickers out of existence, presumably carried directly to whatever cell is linked to those particular shackles.

Tim grimaces, remembering a few awkward experiences the first times he tried to deploy Bruce’s bespelled shackles. Having to hang out in an ultra-secure prison cell until Bruce figured out what happened and rushed over to get him was so embarrassing. At least he knows damn well exactly how secure those cells are, and how unlikely Ra’s is to ever be able to break free.

Damian blinks. “That was… unexpected. I cannot believe Grandfather was human originally.” Turning to his mother with a frown, he asks, “Does this alter my heritage? I always believed myself a quarter each incubus and greater demon, and I suppose I am half-human as well.” He darts a glance to Bruce, who swallows, looking overwhelmed. “Am I actually mostly human?”

Shaking her head, Talia strokes his hair. “Unlikely, my son. After all, I have no human in me. Bruce checked.”

“Was that a sex joke?” Bart says in what he clearly believes to be a whisper, elbowing Kon. “Oh my god, do you think that’s the pickup line he used?” He deepens his voice and whispers, “Do you have a little human in you? No? _Want_ some?” Kon snickers and Cassie is polite enough to pretend her surprised laugh is a cough. Tim just covers his face, wondering why he ever thought it would be a good idea to make friends.

Incredibly, Bruce blushes. “Ah, no. I believe Talia is referring to when she told me about her ancestry and allowed me to perform a few spells to confirm the truth of her words.” He frowns, eyeing Ra’s al Ghul’s crumpled, very torn and dirtied robes where they remained on the throne. “I suppose it’s possible he utilized stolen or borrowed demonic magic to father a child.” He tilts his head, his gaze drifting to the doorways leading into the rest of the castle. “I wonder if he kept records or libraries of his research…”

Talia grins, a ripple of low, rich laughter preceding her reaching up a hand to tilt Bruce’s face toward her. “Beloved, you are entirely too predictable. Come, I will show you the library. There is probably a great deal of work to be done to ensure all his more dangerous research projects are properly sealed or destroyed, and anything useful must be organized and taken with us when we go.”

She gives Damian one last kiss before leaving, tugging Bruce after her. Just as they reach the arched doorway, she casts a knowing glance over her shoulder. “If any of you care to make yourselves of use…” She trails off, meeting Cassie’s eyes with an arched brow.

Cassie follows her pointed gaze to where Damian and Tim are still pressed together, stunned at the overwhelming flow of events. She bites back a smile and rolls her eyes, grabbing a gaping Kon and confused-looking Bart and hauling them with her as she follows Bruce and Talia out of the chamber. “Yeah, good idea.”

Left to themselves, Tim and Damian blink at each other for a moment before Tim clears his throat and steps back. He feels cold when he lets go. “Well, that was insane. I…” He shakes his head, trying to wrap his mind around everything that just happened. “Thanks,” he says after a moment, gaze dropping. “For trying to protect me.”

Damian looks away, hands tightening. “I should have rebelled before it ever came to this. I should never have brought you here in the first place, no matter how I tried to convince myself you would be unharmed. It was foolish and wrong.” 

“Yeah,” Tim says, nodding, because honestly, kidnapping him was a pretty dick move. “I still appreciate your trying to set things right. And… I don’t think it was entirely your fault. I mean, your grandpa was a total asshole and five minutes in his presence was enough to tell me he was a manipulative bag of dicks.” He grins at the snort of laughter that earns him.

“Truly, you have a way with words,” Damian says, finally raising his gaze to look at him. “Timothy, I…” His mouth opens and then closes, a helpless expression on his handsome face. Guilt and longing flash in his eyes before he closes them. “I have no right to ask your forgiveness, let alone more.” A curl of his warm magic softly wraps around Tim’s wrist before recoiling as though uncertain of its welcome.

“Good thing I already forgave you, then. And I’m the one asking, wanna have dinner sometime? Like before, only under better circumstances. You know, what with the whole kidnapping aspect and everything. We can eat more of your fantastic cooking and talk esoteric magical theory again, only without the added spice of my incipient torture and demise.”

Damian winces at the reference even as relief flashes over his face, the warmth of his magic wrapping around Tim again. “That would be wonderful. Are you certain you wish to…?”

“Are you kidding? Do you know how many people are willing to listen to me rant about my interests for hours? And of those people, how many actually _understand_ half of what I say?”

“Point taken.” Damian clears his throat, looking awkward but happy.

Tim tilts his head, listening to the unmistakable sound of small explosions and what he’s pretty sure is Bart and Kon laughing hysterically. “I think we need to get back to the others. My friends really shouldn’t be left unsupervised, bad things tend to happen.” Now is probably not the time to mention that he isn’t exactly any better at avoiding trouble.

Reaching out, he takes Damian’s hand and tugs him toward the arched doorway, mind already full of exploring the rare and fascinating tomes that must fill the former demon king’s personal library. If part of him is still basking in his companion’s warm, welcoming magic and imagining curling up on that cozy couch again later with good food and better company, well, he’s always been good at multitasking.

Green eyes widen and then warm as long, strong fingers curl around his. “As you wish,” Damian murmurs, following him with a smile curving his full lips. There’s a soft look in his eyes when he looks at him, as though Tim’s something wonderful and precious beyond words.

Their arms brush against each other as they walk and Tim thinks he could probably get used to this.

Another crashing sound echoes down the hall, this one followed by Kon’s shrill scream, Cassie’s cackling and Talia’s rich chuckle. “Uh, maybe we should hurry.” Tim briefly considers rushing ahead to help deal with the chaos, then continues walking at the same ambling pace, distracted by the way Damian’s thumb is rubbing thrilling circles on the palm of his hand.

“I’m sure they have things well in hand,” Damian says, still looking at him like he’s a wonder. He doesn’t even wince when the crashing sounds ahead grow even louder as though to deny his words.

“Yeah,” Tim says, leaning his heads into Damian’s shoulder. “Definitely.”

**Author's Note:**

> Between brainstorming, writing, and doing the beta for this story, this work contains contributions from njw, rider_of_spades, salazarastark, shmoo92, silver_snow_77, strawberryjei, and vellaphoria. Thanks, everyone, for all your ideas and effort in putting together this gift for Sol!
> 
> [Capes & Coffee Tim Drake discord server](https://discord.gg/bGhpCDn)  
> *  
> Writers: njw, Silver_Snow_77  
> Betas: Salazarastark, Vellaphoria


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